February 8, 2011

Soli Deo Gloria – Creation

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

Philippians 4:4 -9

God is the Creator, our Creator. God created and creates – we contributed nothing to our creation

Only God can create ab initio … from nothing, something. Amazing power. Power beyond our ability to comprehend. To create where once there was nothing. The power of creation. The power to create. The only true creator. At best, our most brilliant artists only use and make derivative works and repurpose what God has created.

Ps. 97:6 – The Heavens declare the glory of God … There are approximately 100 billion stars in our galaxy. If you counted one star ever second, it would take over 3,000 years to count each one. Beyond our galaxy, there are estimated to be over 100 billion more galaxies.

Fish, birds, and land animals.

One of the joys of parenting is seeing the world again through the eyes of a child. The complete fascination with the curiosities of other living creatures. Bugs. Horses. Dogs. Puppies. Cats. Wow.

Sitting on the bottom of the ocean, watching schools of fish swim in unison. A mountain goat climbing in the Rockies. A city of termites living underground, too close to your house. Pterodactyls. A herd of elephants walking across the Serengeti plain. A common house finch making and tending its nest next to a common garden spider constructing an ornate web. A grizzly bear. Leaping salmon. The water moccasin. The behemoth. A bald Eagle sitting majestically in a yellow pine overlooking a lake as the sun rises. A preying mantis. A lion. A mutt welcoming you home, licking your face. So much more. Each one of these created from the mind of God.

Humans.

A cell. The organic chemistry. Toes. Running. Hearing. Digestion. The heart. Emotions. Sex. Thought. An eye. To see, to capture and decipher certain waves of light. To design beauty with those lights. The mouth and the dangerous tongue. To manipulate air to talk. To move thoughts across space to others. Ears. God created every bit of us.

The elegant ear, its exterior undulating shape should qualify it as modern art but for the fact there’s nothing modern about it.

The simple ear. The highly intellectual communist Whitaker Chambers, a spy against his US government, sat down unwittingly one morning to breakfast next to his young child in high chair. Admiring his first-born child, he gazed upon her ear … that delicate, wonderful, incredible ear through which she could hear her father … that ear. And the realization entered his mind, that ear could not exist by mere chance … that undeniable truth that confronts us all every day in so many ways and that too many try to suppress … He knew her ear could not have been the result of a chance of nature … and the necessary consequence … years in the making, the foundation of his Communist worldview began to crumble, leading to what would become the most high-profile spy dramas of the 20th Century USA.

God created that ear. Out of nothing, he designed us and created the stuff of our existence, of our being.